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MORRISSEY - Paint A Vulgar Picture (1997)
Something appropos for Record Store Day, non?
One of the ironic frontrunners for musicianly self-mythologizing - right up there with The Who’s oft-quoted “hope I die before I get old” trope - Mozzer’s exhaustive checklist of music industry plaints first appeared as The Smiths’ career crumbled apart in the summer of 1987.
And, as we all know now, after a few years’ worth of generous solo releases and freshly exhumed Smiths ephemera (a few collectible B-sides on last-gasp singles, and 1988’s live Rank LP), everyone concerned began cynically bleeding nerdy acolytes dry with one unsuitable reissue after another. A thousand years later, there still hasn’t been an official remastering program, and it wasn’t until a late-2010 bootleg bonanza that fans were able to get excited about mouldy oldies again.
Hard-won cynicism aside, “Paint A Vulgar Picture” is a good song with a typically original lyrical conceit, and whenever I think of another boardroom-initiated, major label industry concept, these are the verses rattling ‘round me ‘ead.
Ladies and gentlemen, even at his most artless, our greatest modern poet:
Re-issue! Re-package! Re-package!
Re-evaluate the songs
Double-pack with a photograph
Extra Track (and a tacky badge)
and
Best of! Most of!
Satiate the need
Slip them into different sleeves!
Buy both, and feel deceived
The version linked above is from Morrissey’s 1997 Maladjusted tour.
I can take or leave Record Store Day. I pay full price for about 160 full-length albums a year, so one day’s worth of hack promotion and limp fist-shaking does as much for me as Earth Hour. If you feel guilty about the way you go about your acquisition of music, just as you may about your energy consumption, do something about it all year long.
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Q-FEEL - Dancing In Heaven (Orbital Be-Bop) (1982)
Unsurpassably sunny ’80s cheese with a chorus you’ll be singing at the bus stop tomorrow. I’m looking into local karaoke joints that may have it in their database.
This is about as idiotically chipper as new wave ever got, barring occasional Motown-styled throw-downs like “Tenderness” and “Walking On Sunshine.” Amazing bassline, quality vocals, and a tremendous telegraphing chorus that’s all-earworm, all-fluff. The Buck Rogers backing girls know the score. Slow, slow, quick, quick, slow.
Q-Feel were a blink-and-you’ll-miss-‘em studio outfit thrown together to compete in the 1982 Eurovision Song Contest, where this earworm of a tune finished a measly sixth-place in the British pre-selection process. That’s where this clip comes from, by the way: the A Song For Europe television special.
Q-Feel signed to Jive Records and released one album in 1983. Its excellent six-minute version of “Dancing In Heaven (Orbital Be-Bop)” often crops up on ’80s comps. It’s worth a listen, because that chorus goes on forever.
The single failed to chart in 1982-83, but a remix made #75 U.S. seven years later.
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SMITH WESTERNS - Weekend (2011)
A song about weekends to kick off your weekend.
My most-sung song last month, which means, yes: I filled the house, the shower, the car, the hallway at work, with attempts at refining the refrain should I ever have to perform it in a karaoke sing-off.
If Smith Westerns were older and English - they’re barely legal and from Chicago - I’d picture them wearing floppy hair, eyeliner and women’s blouses - which means, yes: I hear Suede and Pulp at the height of their twinkly, Ed Buller-produced, glam pop heydays.
I also hear the dazed ‘n’ confused sound of the real housewives of glam rock nation, which means, yes: this is a beckoning finger for all you Bolan, Bowie and Sweet hounds: a woozy hit of hedonistic, singalong rock spiked with wistful guitar hooks that stick like Mackintosh’s Toffee.
The whole album’s like this. Investigate!
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ORCHESTRAL MANOEUVRES IN THE DARK - Dancing (1980)
Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark long straddled the line between forward-thinking experimentalism and keen chart pop. Just because they had a mean left hook that could knock you into next week doesn’t mean they didn’t enjoy a little soft-shoe routine now and then. Or, dispensing with the boxing analogy: witness an early appearance on the BBC’s Old Grey Whistle Test, where OM chooses the debut album’s most out-there track for an all-important national T.V. appearance.
And witness Andy McCluskey’s “dancing.” Much was made of his stiff-legged sway over the years, but no amount of white man’s overbite syndrome would keep OM from popping up all over the charts for the remainder of the decade. Dance however you want, Andy. Wear your afro however you want, Andy.
There’s also a fab same-broadcast run through “Messages,” one of their great, look-ma-no-chorus pop classics (and a #13 U.K. single to boot).
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THE WHITE STRIPES - We’re Going To Be Friends (2002)
R.I.P., and see y’all on the reunion tour in 2015!
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BROADCAST - Come On Let’s Go (2000)
What’s the point in wasting time
On people that you’ll never know
Come on let’s go
When you’re looking for a friend
But it’s empty at the end
When everybody’s disappeared
You won’t be alone
English pop band Broadcast’s singer Trish Keenan died Friday (January 14) of complications from pneumonia. She was 42.
Starting out as a girl-with-boys group making cinematic, retro-futuristic pop when such things were trending in mid-’90s UK music, it was convenient to lump them in with the likes of Saint Etienne, Dubstar, Ivy, Mono and even Pizzicato Five. Ultimately, Broadcast’s spacey sound owed more to Stereolab than any of the aforementioned, although it was more delicate, and the lyrical concerns steered well clear of ‘Lab’s Marxist screed in favour of the personal.
Keenan’s haunting, halting delivery was key to Broadcast’s ambient aesthetic. Its delicacy may have proven too specious for the record-buying public - Broadcast’s chart appearances were fleeting and modest - but that cinematic, ’60s bachelor pad vibe caught at least one VIP’s ear: debut single “The Book Lovers” appeared in Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, alongside the likes of Sergio Mendes & Brasil ‘66, Strawberry Alarm Clock and The Cardigans, when the latter was at its most beguilingly lounge-poppy.
Broadcast released three LPs and a host of singles and collaborative works. Reduced to a functional duo of Keenan and James Cargill, Broadcast had just finished a late-2010 Australian tour when Keenan took ill. She was admitted into intensive care in London, where she died Friday morning. Pneumonia. Good grief.
Broadcast were perennial favourites of BBC legend John Peel, regularly appearing on his year-end Festive Fifty countdowns. “Come On Let’s Go,” featured here in a great performance shot for Later…With Jools Holland, was #5 on Peel’s 2000 list.
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KATE BUSH - Wow (1979)
I would like to be Kate Bush’s dress for three-and-a-half minutes.
I gather that’s the cause-effect the BBC was worrying about as well - when this aired on Top Of The Pops on March 22, 1979, the Beeb dimmed the lights at the point (2:18) Kate sings “he’s too busy hitting the Vaseline,” punctuating the line with a pat on the hip.
Kate Bush is the Devil’s music!
“Wow” reached #14 U.K. in spring 1979.
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ELVIS PRESLEY - Baby, What You Want Me To Do (1968)
On the occasion of El’s 76th birthday, something from the ‘68 Comeback Special that suggests:
- some guys could rock a black leather suit
- some guys could rock a black forelock ‘n’ sideburn combo
- some guys could rock a ‘63 Gibson Super 400 CES
Elvis Presley could do all three. Thanks for the memories, King.
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JAPAN - Cantonese Boy (1982)
This one’s for Mick Karn (1958-2011), who died earlier today after a battle with advanced-stage cancer.
Karn was a founding member of Japan, who aren’t often mentioned when talk turns to the great, creatively original bands of the post-punk and new wave period. The first Japan records were in fact slavish glam rip-offs in the style of the New York Dolls, but the band did a complete about-face in mid-1979, turning to a style closely indebted to contemporaneous Roxy Music: elegant/decadent crooning over measured post-disco beats and lush keyboard textures. Or, think early Duran Duran.
Thing is though, while Duran were copping Roxy, Japan swiftly moved out of that creative cul-de-sac and began weaving ethnic textures into their music: Oriental and Turkish, mixed with a little Germanic oompah structure. None of Japan’s core members played their instruments in recognizeably American or British blues- or R&B-inflected styles, and so what we often heard were incredible, unbalanced-yet-syncopated tracks like this one, which dates from around the time of the band’s final tour.
Mick Karn was more than just the bass player. He also added sax, dida and oboe to the mix, appending both earthy and otherworldly colours to the Japan’s uneasy mix. But Karn’s legacy is his astonishing fretless bass technique: rubbery and tight, it wrapped around the rhythm Japan created via drums and synthesizers. Karn’s bass scores seemed beamed in from deep space, sometimes trance-inducing (“Sons Of Pioneers”), sometimes rhythmically propulsive (“Life In Tokyo”), and sometimes wobbly and queasy (“Visions Of China,” “Cantonese Boy”). I liked the latter ones best, because I’d never heard anything like it in my life, and years later Karn’s work still seems the work of a different player playing to a different song. It’s lead bass work in the way Derek Forbes (Simple Minds) and John Entwistle (The Who) formed a column around which their bands operated, but it also had a popping, frenetic quality about it, like the funk lines John Taylor brought to early Duran records.
Amazing stuff. After Japan split in 1983, Karn formed Dalis Car with Peter Murphy (ex-Bauhaus) for one album, before carrying on as a session musician for the likes of Bill Nelson, Joan Armastrading and Kate Bush. Japan’s core four members reformed for one album, renaming their band Rain Tree Crow for the occasion. Great record, but old tensions resurfaced, and Japan/Rain Tree Crow were put to paid as the album came out in 1991.
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ORANGE JUICE - Rip It Up (1983)
Before CDs slip down the rabbit hole of history the labels’ll be damned if they don’t try everything to get us to buy it all ONE! MORE! TIME!, and one of the more popular approaches for seducing a certain type of well-heeled afficionado is the complete recordings box set.
It works especially well on bands with a fairly small recorded output - The Velvet Underground made a mint off a warts’n’all set during the first box set boom of the early ’90s, and last year’s Big Star set was ideally timed to provide a shoulder for Alex Chilton fans to cry upon when he died unexpectedly a half-year later. (It got even more gruesome when bassist Andy Hummel expired four months after Chilton.)
Now, just in time for the shopping season, U.K. label Domino has given us Coals To Newcastle, a seven-disc treatise on indie pop curiosity Orange Juice, a pretty good Scottish band best-known for recording legendarily ramshackle 45s that turned collector’s items upon their label’s quick demise, as well as making one U.K. top ten single, 1982’s resoundingly terrific “Rip It Up.”
Head boy Edwyn Collins has staged a couple of comebacks since OJ’s short heyday, engendering a fair amount of goodwill in the process. In 1994, his simple ’60s throwback ”A Girl Like You” caught everyone by surprise when it broke from the Empire Records film to become a stylish dancefloor staple and radio hit (#4 U.K./#32 U.S.). A cerebral hemorrhage in early 2005 presumably put paid to his public life, but the now 51-year-old singer has completed his second post-illness album and has played some live performances in recent years, which makes him something beyond a physical marvel: maybe a super trouper, as ABBA would have said.
Anyway: “Rip It Up.” What a great tune. Orange Juice had always wished a gangly, funky strain upon their songs, although the nuances of the form initially laid well beyond their untutored grasp. White-boy funk was a popular sub-genre in post-punk Britain, with everyone from Dexy’s Midnight Runners to Haircut 100 to Spandau Ballet to Pigbag following a trail blazed by David Bowie in 1975. On “Rip It Up,” OJ slowed the tempo and built it around the amazing Roland TB-303 bass synthesizer, a sequencing keyboard that allowed the user incredibly flexible options for accenting and shaping notes. In skilled hands it sounded irresistably cool, and “Rip It Up“‘s expert demonstration of the synth’s possibilities gave the song its wonderful hook.
In fact, if you’re still reading I’m going to direct you to the actual video for the recorded version of the song, right here. It’s a pretty dated bit of gauche mugging, but the song’s worth the time. Listen first, laugh later. It’ll have you bouncing happily off the walls.
The version linked in this blog post features a game attempt to recreate the bassline by feeding bass guitar through a phaser. OJ pass the test with flying colours, actually. This live take, recorded for the British program Old Grey Whistle Test, shows what happens when a bunch of kids start hammering away at a brilliant groove, especially during the closing quarter, when Collins loses himself in the thrill of the moment. At heart, he’s just a music fan like the rest of us.
“Rip It Up” was Orange Juice’s lone mainstream hit, making #8 U.K. in early 1983.
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FRANK SINATRA - Fly Me To The Moon (1966)
This - and so much other goodness - has just been released on video as part of a seven-DVD set sure to land under many a Sinatraphile’s Christmas tree, solving the head-scratching problem of how to enjoy Frank Sinatra’s numerous ’60s T.V. specials in an era of YouTube watchdogs. By the time you press play on this clip it’ll likely be pulled down. It happens a lot with Frank’s stuff.
“Fly Me To The Moon” first dropped into the Sinatra camp in 1964, recorded for It Might As Well Be Swing, his second album with Count Basie. Subsequent versions - such as this one here, done with Nelson Riddle - have led most people to imagine the song as a bright, snappy swing number, but the Basie version was a little more restrained and subtle. In other words…Frank knew when the cameras were rolling.
So, what we’re looking at is the opening performance of 1966’s A Man And His Music, Part II, one of about six annual-ish specials shot for broadcast television. Frank usually set a mix of recent LP and singles material against a few career highlights, topping up with a couple of curiosities from whomever he had on as guest stars. In this case it’s delightful daughter Nancy, mere months removed from her first #1 single, which means I already know of one friend bound to be asking for a private viewing of her five-song contribution to the cause.
Frank’s on pretty damn good form here, which means rippling excitement and stentorian authority at every turn. Now 50 years old, his voice had weathered and deepened from the velvet purity of his Columbia years and the expert suppleness of his Capitol peak. In the ’60s he frequently worked with flashier arrangements that allowed him shorter notes and snappier phrasing, which to my ears sounds both easier to manage and a little less divine, but it sure makes for scintillating television. ”Fly Me To The Moon” was a Sinatra hit of recent vintage, so without an older template to compare it to the perceived loss of technical skill is moot. This is all stabs of bright colour and pulse-quickening pop from the Mad Men era, rendered by the greatest entertainer of his time at his most engaging. The final chorus really is pretty fab, daddy-o.
In other words…if you don’t like this, you probably won’t like Frank.
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THE KINKS - Days (1968)
The first time I heard this song I welled up by the second chorus, thinking of my pet dog dying a few months earlier. “Days” thus became part of the firmament, because I only have a handful of songs I’ve reacted so strongly to upon first listen. Evidently the song has that kind of effect on people.
I’d cut my wrists to write a song as good as ‘Days’ - Bob Geldof.
“Days” was written and recorded in the spring of 1968, following the first serious downturn in The Kinks’ commercial fortunes. They’d already suffered stateside, as a performance ban had effectively killed their progress in America (blacklisted, following a 1965 no-pay, no-play fiasco in California). But now their records were stiffing in England as well: where once a run of 12 out of 13 singles made the Top 10, the last pair had peaked no higher than #20.
With fan interest subsiding, bassist Pete Quaife on the verge of quitting and leader Ray Davies’ songwriting taking a decided turn away from the mod zeitgeist that had sustained the band through its early successes, “Days” has an elegiac bent, and this is why the song is so powerful. In terms of intent, Davies wrote it under the belief The Kinks’ days were numbered. He was always a disarmingly direct lyricist, so perhaps there’s nothing unexpected about the wistfulness herein:
Thank you for the days,
Those endless days, those sacred days you gave me…Days I’ll remember all my life.
Days when you can’t see wrong from right.
You took my life, but then I knew that very soon you’d leave me.
But it’s all right, now I’m not frightened of this world, believe me.
But I think it’s the music that packs the killer punch here. Taken at a gentle, acoustic amble, “Days” flows like a pretty folk song through its first 80 seconds, until Davies’ masterful arrangement kicks back the curtain to take on an even deeper melancholy. It’s at this point - that second chorus which had me on the verge of tears - when Mick Avory’s beautifully recorded, lightly delayed drums grow more assertive, when Dave Davies’ harmony vocal raises the hairs on your arms, when the mellotron string accompaniment grows even richer, that “Days” gains its unstoppable momentum, encapsulating what’s so wonderful - and bittersweet - about companionship in all its myriad forms: it’s possibly impermanent, as life itself is fleeting, but the experience will stay with you forever. The tag line (“thank you for the days…”), followed immediately by a gorgeously, absurdly simple five-note melodic climb, seals the deal. It’s one of the most transcendant passages in pop music’s long history, I tell you.
The rest is icing. Wait until the double-timed drums punch a hole in the sky during the last chorus. Wait until the dramatic final call out, all rising bassline and searing strings and clattering percussion. “Days” temporarily restored The Kinks to the upper reaches of the U.K. charts, peaking at #12. A year later, the BBC elected to air this clip during its final music program of the decade, as if to acknowledge its potential as an ideal song for the closing credits to life’s little movies.
“Days” is one of the greatest songs of its year, or any other year. It’s my favourite Kinks song, and possibly my favourite song of the decade by a British artist. And if I have a say in what gets playlisted for my closing credits…
And though you’re gone,
You’re with me every single day, believe me…
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